Grow Your Own Beer Garden, for the ultimate do-it-yourselfer

To paraphrase George Michael, “Beer is natural, beer is good, not everybody drinks it, but everybody should.” OK, maybe not everybody should drink it, but almost every adult does. Some of them even go so far as to buy their own beer-brewing kits, both to save money, and to “bond” with the beverage just that much more. If someone really wanted to bond with their beer, what would their next step be, to get a kit where they grow their own grains?! Why, yes. It would be exactly that.

The Grow Your Own Beer Garden kit comes with a greenhousey little dome, growing medium, gravel, and packs of wheat, barley and hops seeds. The wheat aids in fermentation, the barley provides the starch, and the hops add flavor. The kit also contains instructions on how to grow and transmogrify those ingredients into a drinkable beer. No word on how much beer one crop would yield, but hopefully it would be worth the effort - if it were just one glass, for instance... well, it would have to be really good beer.

Once you become a grassroots beer-maker, you could perhaps even join in the race to create the world’s strongest beer. If nothing else, it would be a unique hobby. And ladies, this might be a good way to get your fellas interested in gardening.

The Grow Your Own Beer Garden kit is available for US$24.99 from ThinkGeek.

An experienced freelance writer, videographer and television producer, Ben's interest in all forms of innovation is particularly fanatical when it comes to human-powered transportation, film-making gear, environmentally-friendly technologies and anything that's designed to go underwater. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where he spends a lot of time going over the handlebars of his mountain bike, hanging out in off-leash parks, and wishing the Pacific Ocean wasn't so far away.